Siege of Wuhan (1271)

The Siege of Wuhan (1271 CE) was a battle of Kublai Khan's conquest of the Song dynasty of southern China in which the Mongol Empire razed the city of Wuhan.

History
From 1267 to 1273, Kublai Khan of the Empire of the Great Khan (the Mongol Empire's lands in Mongolia and China) launched a campaign to conquer the Song dynasty's city of Xiangyang during his master plan to make himself the emperor of China. During the Siege of Xiangyang, he dispatched an army to capture the city of Wuhan along the Yangtze River to weaken the Song forces in the south, and his army built a base at Huangshi and prepared for the storm of Wuhan.

The Mongols formed an army of mangudai cavalry, onagers, and scorpion crossbow siege weapons, and they assaulted the Song city. The Mongols razed the buildings there and massacred all of the inhabitants, forcing the city to submit to them the hard way. The Mongols suffered substantial losses from friendly fire due to the close proximity of their units to the buildings being attacked by their catapults, but their army razed the city and prepared to also seize Xianning.